Nolan Naranjo, 5, learns how to write a capital "A." Naranjo is taught the same lessons as many kindergartners, except that his lessons are scheduled around his treatment. Nolan Naranjo, 5, learns how to write a capital "A." Naranjo is taught the same lessons as many kindergartners, except that his lessons are scheduled around his treatment.

Nolan Naranjo, 5, learns how to write a capital "A." Naranjo is taught the same lessons as many kindergartners, except that his lessons are scheduled around his treatment. Nolan Naranjo, 5, learns how to

Texas Children's Hospital Child Life Department HISD teacher Donna Shanklin-Henderson left, works on a school lesson with Ty Gibson. Gibson has a brain tumor and suffered two strokes at 2 years old. ( James Nielsen / Chronicle ) Texas Children's Hospital Child Life Department HISD teacher Donna Shanklin-Henderson left, works on a school lesson with Ty Gibson. Gibson has a brain tumor and suffered two strokes at 2 years old. ( James Nielsen / Chronicle )

Texas Children's Hospital Child Life Department HISD teacher Donna Shanklin-Henderson left, works on a school lesson with Ty Gibson. Gibson has a brain tumor and suffered two strokes at 2 years old. ( James

Ty Gibson pushes a COW, or computer on wheels, down the halls of the Texas Children's Hospital. Gibson, who is deaf in his right ear and partially blind in his right eye, loves to play video games as a reward for completing his lessons.

Ty Gibson pushes a COW, or computer on wheels, down the halls of the Texas Children's Hospital. Gibson, who is deaf in his right ear and partially blind in his right eye, loves to play video games as a reward

HISD teacher Elisama Lerma works with older students who are patients at the hospital. in the classroom at the hospital Thursday, Oct. 11, 2012, in Houston. ( James Nielsen / Chronicle )HISD teacher Elisama Lerma works with older students who are patients at the hospital. in the classroom at the hospital Thursday, Oct. 11, 2012, in Houston. ( James Nielsen / Chronicle )

HISD teacher Elisama Lerma works with older students who are patients at the hospital. in the classroom at the hospital Thursday, Oct. 11, 2012, in Houston. ( James Nielsen / Chronicle )HISD teacher Elisama

In the morning, Donna Shanklin-Henderson settles her soul and girds her spirit with prayer and meditation. She banishes the tiniest pebbles of pessimism and fixes her mind on one abiding thought.

All of my students will go home, she tells herself, inscribing the belief deep in her core. They will live happy, healthy lives.

Then Shanklin-Henderson heads to Texas Children's Hospital and boards an elevator to the 16th floor, rising past floors awash in shades of teal blue, mint green and sunshine yellow, past rooms where children battle cancer and brain tumors, leukemia and lupus, diabetes and other diseases with names too tongue-twisting to pronounce.

Shanklin-Henderson's destination is tucked in the corner of a purple hallway, where a brightly colored sign beckons: "Welcome to Room 286. HISD Schools."

Inside this room, in a place where daily miracles coexist with unimaginable losses, she and two fellow Houston Independent School District teachers, Elisama Lerma and Natasha Mallone, offer hope in the guise of a lesson plan. They provide a link to normalcy for children whose lives have been upended, a soothing shoulder for parents whose strength is being strained.

They craft schedules around bone marrow transplants and physical therapy sessions. They teach phonics to kindergartners recovering from brain surgery and science to high school students enduring chemotherapy. And, using laptops, iPads and a computer on wheels, they bring school to the bedsides of children unable to leave their rooms.

But each day begins with a reminder that this is not a regular classroom, and that their pupils grapple with problems much bigger than passing a test.

That's when Shanklin-Henderson reviews the hospital census to see which students are still enrolled. Some may have been released. Others may have changed rooms. A few may have been transferred to different floors as their condition worsens or improves.

And, sometimes, on the bleakest of days, one of their kids may not have made it through the night.

"Miracles are happening all the time. We see kids improving, so my expectation is that all of my students will get better," Shanklin-Henderson says. "But here every day, there's the possibility that their recovery might not happen the way you like."

Indeed, during a two-week span in October, the teachers in Room 286 hailed the achievements of children emerging from illness, bid happy good-byes to students ready to go home - and were left staggered and grief-stricken by the sudden death of a young patient with gentle eyes and a lyrical laugh.

Nolan Naranjo

Just after 9:30 a.m. on the second Thursday of October, Shanklin-Henderson bursts into Room 34 of the Bone Marrow Transplant Unit like a cheerful tornado. She is swathed in billowing blue - blue latex gloves, blue plastic hospital gown, a face mask decorated with pastel pink and blue teddy bears.

And she tows a COW, a computer on wheels stocked with crayons, stickers, reading primers and educational games.

Nolan Naranjo sits on his hospital bed, wearing Super Mario Brothers pajamas and neon green socks adorned with black spiders. He is five fingers old, with huge brown eyes, and, as his mother puts it, "the most beautiful bald head."

Two weeks earlier, Nolan received a bone marrow transplant to fight myelodysplastic syndromes, also known as pre-leukemia. Without the transplant, said his mother, Jennifer Naranjo, he likely would have developed acute myelogenous leukemia, which is much harder to treat.

Like other patients on the eighth floor, Nolan has a suppressed immune system, forcing him to remain in isolation. But that doesn't stop Shanklin-Henderson from making sure the kindergartner from Brownsville keeps up in school.

"I see you did your homework. Excellent! Good job!" coos Shanklin-Henderson, who has a voice as smooth as molasses and the demeanor of everyone's favorite kindergarten teacher. "You ready to play a game?"

Nolan nods his head slowly, scooting closer to the tray table by his bed. He has a busy hour ahead of him. On today's agenda: an alphabet game, learning the "A" sound, "Richard Scarry's Best Learning Songs Video Ever," and letter-writing practice.

Shanklin-Henderson leads him through the lessons with a mixture of coddling, clapping and delicate nudging.

She grasps Nolan's tiny fingers in her blue-gloved hand and guides his pencil as he painstakingly traces a capital "A." She sings along to the video, with Nolan softly crooning the lyrics to himself: "Shapes, shapes, all around." As they review the days of the week, the month, and the year, Shanklin-Henderson exclaims, "You're so super smart."

It is a routine straight out of any kindergarten classroom. Except that Nolan is tethered to a tangle of cords connected to IV drips and monitors. Except that, as he learns that A is for alligator, one of those monitors begins to beep furiously.

Except that, when a nurse changes his IV bag, Nolan, inured to pokes and prods and pinches, doesn't even flinch. And neither does his teacher.

My Nguyen

The young girl with luminous eyes and a shorn head perches on the edge of her bed, in a room the color of lemon meringue pie. She wears sky blue pajamas, dangling earrings and a carved white Buddha pendant around her thin neck.

If she had not gotten sick from a blood disorder, My Nguyen would be in ninth grade. Instead, like all school-age patients admitted for four weeks or longer, My qualified to enroll in the hospital school, which is run through HISD's Community Services department and Texas Children's Child Life program.

She takes online classes through Connections Academy, as do most of the high school students, and receives regular visits from Elisama Lerma, a teacher whose smile contains infinite tenderness.

Lerma works with many of the older students and Spanish-speaking patients. Earlier that morning, she nodded approvingly while scanning My's grades and showed off an email the 14-year-old had written in flawless Spanish.

Despite her illness, My carries a full load of classes and never misses an assignment. At Lerma's urging, she has even pushed past her own reticence to take speech and debate.

But it is Spanish she loves, Spanish she can't wait to practice, Spanish she dreams of speaking fluently someday.

"Hola, coma estas?" Lerma greets her student.

"Muy bien, gracias," replies the soft-spoken My.

"Are you feeling better?" asks Lerma, who is bundled in the protective blue gear required on the eighth floor. "I really love your email in Spanish. You are doing excellent."

My beams with shy pride.

She eagerly demonstrates her math skills in Spanish, clicking numbers on the screen of Lerma's laptop and counting from "cero" to "veinte." She picks words on index cards to match the illustrations: "muchacho" for boy, "señor" for man, "señorita" for young woman.

And she giggles. All the time. She giggles when prompted to call an imaginary character "feo," or ugly, when Lerma commends her with a hearty "muy bien," when a nurse stops by to draw blood for labs and jokes "You are on it!"

But she giggles the most when Lerma promises to return with cumbia, salsa and merengue music and dancing lessons.

At first, it seems like Ty Gibson will miss his Oct. 16 class. When Shanklin-Henderson checks his room in the 12th-floor Rehabilitation Unit, his bed is empty.

But as Shanklin-Henderson heads back to the 16th floor, she spots Ty fast asleep in a wheelchair pushed by his mother. Exhausted from physical therapy, the 6-year-old is curled like a kitten under a Thomas the Tank Engine blanket. A few minutes later, however, he is wide awake and clamoring to go to Room 286.

The kindergartner from Livingston knows that if he finishes all his assignments, "Teacher" will let him play some video games.

Today's session, however, doesn't go smoothly.

Ty is having a stubborn day. He's being a little cranky, a little tired, a little impatient. He's being a little boy.

When Shanklin-Henderson displays an October calendar on the computer screen, Ty oohs with delight. Then he scrunches his face into a frown.

"Are you mad because I didn't let you print the calendar?" Shanklin-Henderson asks.

He nods, then whispers in a hoarse, ragged voice. "I want to play a game."

"First, let's write the number 9. All the way up and back down, " she instructs, steering his finger along an electronic tablet screen.

"I can't do it," Ty resists.

"Yes, you can," the teacher insists.

It is a refrain he repeats over and over: "I can't do it." Each time, Shanklin-Henderson assures Ty that he can. He can write the number. He can connect the dots to link the letters of the alphabet. He can sort capital and lower case A's.

Each time, with effort and cajoling, he does.

This is Ty's second time at Texas Children's, the second time he has had brain surgery, the second time he has had to relearn how to walk, talk and eat. The first time, when he was just 2, Ty suffered two strokes from a tumor wrapped around his brain stem. This time, Ty's lungs collapsed after a July 26 surgery to remove a new tumor growing inside his brain stem.

He is deaf in his right ear, partially blind in his right eye, walks with a stiff-legged gait and struggles to speak clearly. But every day, he goes faster with his child-size walker, his words grow easier to understand, his motor skills get sharper.

And, on days when Ty feels like he can't maneuver the computer mouse to drag the capital "A" into the right basket, his teacher just says: "If you can ride Super Mario, you can drop an "A" into the basket."

Then he does.

Ha Dao

Ha Dao's father hovers in the corner of Room 286, watching his daughter with an expression that shifts from pride to relief to anguish to hope.

Two months ago, Ha was fine - no indicators of illness, no warning signs, no lingering symptoms. Then one day, she had a slight fever. The next, she was at Texas Children's diagnosed with acute leukemia and undergoing chemotherapy treatments.

Five days later, she was in surgery, having part of her skull removed to relieve bleeding on the brain, recounts Phuong Dao, his words tumbling out as if telling the story will purge the poison.

Still, they were lucky, says Dao, a Vietnamese refugee. He had considered accepting a job offer in California but stayed in Houston to be near family. So Ha has access to one of the country's best children's hospitals.

Ha was already at Texas Children's when the bleeding occurred. If she had not been, doctors told Dao, she likely would not have survived.

Now, as the 14-year-old recovers, she can study pre-algebra, science and social studies, and nurture her dreams of becoming a "doctor for cancer."

"It's not nice to have cancer, so I want to help others going through it," says Ha, her voice barely more than a murmur behind the mask.

On this Tuesday, Oct. 23, the eighth-grader sits in a wheelchair in front of a computer. Her mouth is concealed by the hospital's ubiquitous teddy bear face mask and her eyes, framed behind glasses with pink floral designs, are focused on a unit about scientific measurements.

On the table behind Ha, Shanklin-Henderson has placed a Halloween surprise: a black papier-mâché pumpkin and a paperback copy of "Monster High," a book Ha has been longing to read.

Dao grins, pleased by the teacher's gift and his daughter's progress.

This HISD hospital school means so much more than grades and grammar lessons, Dao says. It is optimism made tangible. It is the manifestation of the belief that his child will get better.

It is a belief that keeps Dao and the other parents going, one they preach daily to their children.

"It tells me that there is light at the end of the tunnel for my daughter," Dao says.

Saying goodbye

There are no words on Wednesday, no way for the teachers in Room 286 to adequately express their sorrow.

Just a few days earlier, Shanklin-Henderson had celebrated Nolan's move to a transitional apartment near Texas Children's, marking a major step in his recovery.

The day before, she had shed happy tears when Ty told his mother that he did not want to leave the hospital on his scheduled Nov. 8 release date. "I want to stay here with Teacher," he explained, earning a bear hug from Shanklin-Henderson.

Lerma, too, had rejoiced in the news that four of her students were well enough to head home.

But this morning, they learn that My did not make it through the night.

They knew she had been growing weaker, that she had been admitted to the pediatric intensive care unit. Still, they are stunned. It is the first student Shanklin-Henderson and Lerma, both in their first year assigned to the hospital, have lost.

And it is My, the gentle girl with a gift for Spanish and a giggle that was infectious.

"She did her best until the very end," says Lerma, her voice choked by emotion. "For me, the miracle is that she could forget her sorrow and pain, that she tried until the last minute."

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